Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Latin Poetic Influences

Global Influences

It is so important I think to move beyond our small American cadre of poets and look at poets who with a global perspective give us so much. I spend allot of time with latin american, Spanish and Italian poets. This is a bias on my part since I speak these languages but I must say that I also find the retention of the lyric along with the avant garde in these poetics moving and fulfilling. Apart from the obvious poets, Neruda, Vallejo, Drummond de Andrade, Pessoa, Alberti and Lorca I love Montale and Ungaretti and the Italian futurists as well. It is in this great mash that so much can be ascertained.

Reading poets in another language is almost like having an affair. English is my first language and American is my cultural idiom but to immerse myself in Italian, Portugese or Spanish is to cheat just a little and taste a new flavor that cannot be had in English. There are some American poets who have drunk these waters as well, Williams, Pound and others. I urge all to do so.